DISCLAIMER
The following content has been written for purely for the sake of entertainment . I apologize in advance, if I might instigate any religious agitation. Context has been chosen for mere effect and nothing else.
Any resemblance to person, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Sujay Hegde.
Trepidation and confusion birthed in the thick crowd as they gathered near the village lake.
Today was a sultry day and the sun stood high in the sky, exuberant in its primordial balefulness. Some of the local women had covered their heads with a tenuous saree hood while others donned a burka. The wind had stopped. The chirping of birds were as null as the chirping of birds in space. The place was infested with slow and steady murmurs, palpable tension and morbid curiosity.
Little Ayyub trembled and took his baby steps towards the place where everyone thronged, cheeks jiggling with each reckless and sharp footstep. He had broken free from his mother’s grasp and had darted towards the lake a couple of minutes ago. Her screams and shouts could not make him stay, nor would they ever.
People looked down at him with near sincere sympathy. Some tried picking him up, only to drop him down to the ground whenever he began kicking and yelling. They could tell he knew, or probably had an idea.
The tell-tale signs were his eyes and face which bore the marks of incessant crying. His fingers gripped tightly around a stone much larger than his hand. His jaw was set tightly, brows creased and all he cared about was moving ahead to look at what lay in front of him. Yet all he could manage to look at was the constant veil of dust left behind by people’s slippers and feet as they thronged the place like iron fills around a magnet. He tried squiggling between their legs, got stuck and was lifted off the ground by a pair of hands.Crying and kicking did not help, their fake sympathy and protectiveness overpowered him.
When he could no longer kick, he thrust his baby fist into the man’s eyes and wriggled free. He ran now, caring no longer about what people thought or felt.
Because people, no matter how great they proclaim themselves to be, are chained to one another. Their minds are linked and colonized. They fear and cringe together. They stumble and fall together. They negate change and uphold superstition, together.
Together, they are unwavering.
Together, they are a massive, impregnable bond.
And such were the people he knew. Reeking of fear and ancient principles.
But his father wasn’t one.
He knew, even though he didn't know how to feed or wash himself properly, that his father was somehow right. He knew, in his tender heart, the modicum of an idea his father stood for.
It was his father, Sameer Qureshi Pasha, who had fed the hungry when they had come home. It was his father, who had looked after his neighbor’s cattle during times of distress. It was his father, who believed in the ideologies that eventually led people to brand him, ‘a kafir’.
Sameer stood for what was right. He had repeatedly said, in that feeble tone of his, ‘Choose not what profession you’ll go after. Choose not the money or fame, or the luxury of a lavish living. Choose what person you intend to become. For that will bring immense happiness to me, child. Even if I’m not around to see you become one.’ He had said, ruffling Ayyub’s hair and placing the morsel of semi-solid food (made especially for his under developed teeth) in his mouth.
Ayyub had giggled happily, understanding, but never admitting.
That one thing, he had disliked in his father. He was an optimist alright, but an optimist who carried an umbrella. Speaking constantly about death and decay, he had earned his son’s annoyance towards him.
‘Death is just an end to our mortal life, son. Our true abode, is with Allah.’
He wanted to tell how much he hated his dad for talking like that. He really did.
But Ayyub was born a mute. All he could manage was pained guttural noises.
Right now he was standing in between clouds of dust; horrid, traumatizing speculations filling his brain.
Ayyub reached the front of the circular perimeter that had been formed to keep people at bay. He held on to a small metal wire that ran between six to seven thick wooden poles, his body being compressed by the legs of others. His eyes fixated on his father. The straggly, copper colored beard, the whole of his head bent down, chin touching chest, the skull cap glowing pearly white against the background.
The whole world slowed behind him as he noticed his father’s hands, tied behind his back. Qureshi was made to sit on his knees, atop the sharp pebbles that were scattered across the shore.
The knees hinted red.
Ayyub was clever enough to understand what that was, because he had once managed to tear a thin flap of skin on his finger with his teeth. The result, was a small trickle of red color that hurt so much.
His dad was in pain.
He wanted to request the men dressed in black garb, circling around his dad, to release him. He tried to, with all his manageable inner strength. The pleading came out as a croak. His eyes welled up with tears again.
One man looked down, and placed his index finger on his lips, motioning him to remain silent. The others were talking. There were five in all. With black masks that covered their heads and faces till their necks. With long black things that hung from their waists, and for some on their backs.
He had seen those objects. They made a lot of noise and Ayyub disliked them. His granddad used them when he went hunting. Rumors were that they were used to punish people. All one had to do was aim that thing at a person and a hole would punch through them.
He had heard, for he was a sharp lad. He did not quite understand what they were doing so close to his dad.
Ayyub looked around desperately for help.
With eyebrows raised to their fullest and tears cascading down his still tender cheeks, he cried again. The people looked at him with woebegone faces. The masked men continued talking and laughing, utterly ignorant of Ayyub’s cries.
His dad now lifted his head to look at his only son. The face, streaked with sweat and tears. He smiled a weary smile and opened his mouth to say something. Ayyub never understood it. He looked around helplessly. He hurled the rock in frustration at one of the masked men. It hit him squarely on the jaw and the man rushed towards him, ready to crush the little nugget of a being, but was stopped by one his other men.
‘Your job, lies here.’
Five minutes passed.
The five men gathered behind Sameer. The one in the center pulled out a couple of sheets of paper and looked at the first page. The slow, but loud reciting form the Quran continued for several minutes. People did nothing, for they were people. No sound from them, no objections or upheavals.
Everyone watched with bated breath as the center was handed a long shiny blade.
He scrubbed it clean with a piece of cloth tied to his waist.
‘Allahu Akbar.’
The knife rose above the man’s head and was brought down sharply, towards Sameer. Towards his father.
A pair of hands closed over Ayyub’s eyes. He waited for his father’s banter about death. Or his words of agony.
He got none.
After a brief period of darkness, he felt a hand lift him up and the slow, gentle sway as he was placed across the shoulder of a lady. The hands that covered his eyes came off and he saw what lay in front of him.
The five black men still remained, crowding the area where his father knelt earlier.
The hoods came off the women’s heads as a strong wind blew by, lifting more sand along with it, forcing Ayyub to close his eyes. The wind knocked a bird’s nest off a tree’s branch. It fell to the ground, upside down like a bowl. A young bird, trapped inside the multitude of intertwined strings, cried out to its maker. The mother bird answered the call swiftly and swooped down to protect its spawn.
The wind continued to blow, stronger now.
People vacated the area, some mutterings here and there about dinner and weather. They would not talk about this, not for a long time.
The woman who carried Ayyub was constantly patting his back, rubbing it gently and talking to him slowly. She spoke a great deal to him about how his father would come back home and feed him his favorite, hot rice mixed with ghee. This brought about a small flicker of happiness inside the confused boy. The qualms in his head, fading slowly.
The women made way to Sameer’s home, one carrying Ayyub, still dangling from her shoulder. The clouds gathered, gradually. The slow, faint rumbling of thunder was evident.
Time passed swiftly for Ayyub as he was placed in his crib and wrapped inside a warm blanket, back in his house. He pulled out one arm from under the sheet and gently, sucked on the thumb. His tender finger felt the fleshy insides of his mouth, occasionally meeting a tooth here and there. It twisted and turned, spittle trickling down his chin, the tongue playing on its tip. He thought about his father and the promise he had made to show him the squirrel he had caught yesterday. An innocent smile washed over his face forming two dimples on both his cheeks.
The room in which he lay had the door closed to its fullest. The gentle patter of rain, calmed him into curling himself into a ball and closing his eyes. The qualms about his father were sedated as sleep won over him. The thumb hung limply from his mouth.
Outside the door, the scenario was of utter horror and despair. The women folk, with all their combined fragile feminine state of mind were somehow able to bring down the body of Ummehani Pasha which was slowly swiveling on a noose that hung from the ceiling fan. Just below the dangling feet, there lay a broken glass frame that had once enclosed a picture of the three, husband wife and child, just outside the masjid, making their way into the new life, braving a smile.
But the women would only see the blood stains on the cracked glass and the cuts on her fingers. They would never see the charred remains of the photo that were now deposited inside a sink.
They females brought down the body after several minutes of weeping and stunned silence. Except one, the rest stayed there, morbidly attached to the dead body. The sight of a dead body is compelling, more than repulsive. It commands you to look at it, feel a wave of nausea, and cower away for a moment only to look back at it again. This series of grimaced glances continued amongst the women for quite some time and was also laced with mock pity.
The one lady who had carried Ayyub had never been married. She walked slowly to the room and opened the door just a crack. The day had not been darkened yet and she could see him sleeping peacefully, thumb in mouth. She walked in, gently picked him up and made way to the outside.
The rest of the women continued their wailing, oblivious to the outside world. As she walked, Ayyub latched onto her shoulder, clutching the edge of her blouse tightly in his puny fists, in a sleep induced trance.
From this point on, we would know that the woman who took Ayyub had disappeared from the village. A lot many people searched, even greater enquires were made and police complaints, registered. We would know that none of these attempts bore fruit.All were futile as Ayyub was a distant memory for the village.
No one knew where the lady took the poor baby, but eventually, we do come to know the fact that she married a man soon after she moved to another place. She started a new family together and the baby was raised to become an adult, under a new name, under a new identity.
Under a new religion.
He would be free from all social perils. He would be free to choose whatever, free to follow his own path. Free to believe, just like his father.
And someday, that woman who gave him a new life would sit on a chair, holding a cup of tea in her old rickety fingers, occasionally parting her old grey hair. And whilst sipping on the hot, bland beverage, she would look at the boy, who would have now become a strapping young man and force him to sit down with her. Once that was done, she would clasp his hand in her own and tell him a story of a lifetime.
The lifetime of the one person who was called and would be called, The Kafir.